“I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“There is only darkness, starless and complete. The waves glitter like a million dull knives.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“It was as if some magnetic repulsion, which before had kept our two carriages from meeting and passing, had now been reversed, and so sucked me inexorably forward, drawing me towards something my heart made clear I feared - or should fear - utterly, in the way some people are fatally attracted towards an abyss while standing on its very edge.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“He would never forget the feeling of that first year, the sense of freedom just being on his own gave him. He had his own room for the first time, his own money to spend as he wanted, his own food to buy and places to go and decisions to make; it was glorious, sublime.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“I luv the ded, this old baster sez to me when I wiz tryin to get some innfurmashin out ov him. You fukin old pervirt I sez, gettin a bit fed up by this time enyway, an slit his throate; ah asks you whare the fukin Sleeping Byootie woz, no whit kind of humpin you lyke.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“jammed inside the bastard for three hours.’). And that bridge, the bridge . . . have to make a pilgrimage to”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“Future became Present, Present became Past. A truth so banal, so obvious and accepted that he had somehow managed to ignore it before.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would know she was part of you.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“This is not a long bridge, but it goes on for ever. I am not far from the bank, but I will never get there. I walk but I never move. Fast or slow, running, turning, doubling back, jumping, throwing myself or stopping; nothing makes any difference.”
― Iain Banks, quote from The Bridge
“From Indonesian and Malay mythology, pontianaks are said to be spirits of women who died while giving birth. A pontianak kills her victims by digging into their stomachs with her sharp dirty fingernails and devouring their organs. Yum.”
― Kevin Kwan, quote from China Rich Girlfriend
“From beneath the folds of his robes, he reveals a small steel dagger. “You have tempted fate so many times already and still yield to it. Time for history to rewrite itself. Time for Tutankhamen to have a new ending.” Aten holds the hilt out to me.
I stare at the dagger. The hilt is bronze, carved with sun discs that glow when they catch the sun. “What do you want me to do with that?”
Aten smiles a white, gaping grin. “Kill Tutankhamen and carve out his heart.”
― Leah Rooper, quote from Jane Unwrapped
“Months after my first real breakup, I was experiencing the ego thrash that comes with watching an old boyfriend move on. I was lucky she wasn’t a beauty queen. Dissecting her physical flaws was the aspirin that would not heal my wounds, but temporarily eased my pain. For the first time in my life, I managed to behave like a true southern belle. I lifted my lips into a bright smile and warmly greeted my enemy as if she were my new best friend.
With all the phony verbal sugar I could muster I said, “Hi! We haven’t met before. My name’s Maggie.”
― Maggie Georgiana Young, quote from Just Another Number
“Niemożność dostrzeżenia szerszego kontekstu to zwykły skutek uszkodzenia okolic kory przedczołowej, a dotknięci tą przypadłością pacjenci często nie mogą posunąć się dalej niż jeden czy dwa kroki na drodze do realizacji jakiegokolwiek zadania'.”
― Sam Kean, quote from The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: And Other True Stories of Trauma, Madness, Affliction, and Recovery That Reveal the Surprising History of the Human Brain
“A bird in a cage is never as beautiful as a bird that is free [...].”
― Sylvain Reynard, quote from The Raven
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.